As the election year begins, President Joe Biden will travel on Jan. 5 to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where he will deliver a speech to mark the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, with a message centered on the threats to U.S. democracy and fundamental freedoms.
During his speech, President Biden is expected to intensify his criticism of his predecessor, President Donald Trump, who is the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination.
President Biden’s campaign announced that the president is to speak at a college near Valley Forge, a location of great historical significance as it served as George Washington’s headquarters for the Continental Army during part of the Revolutionary War. In the winter of 1777–1778, Gen. Washington and his troops camped at Valley Forge, which is about 18 miles west of Philadelphia.
The chosen venue for the speech, Montgomery County Community College, is situated about 15 miles from the historic site. The speech was moved up by a day due to a predicted winter storm in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic this weekend.
Biden campaign officials briefed reporters on Jan. 2 on some of the campaign’s strategies, one of which is labeling President Trump as a threat to democracy in the United States.
“The choice for voters next year will not simply be between competing philosophies of governing. The choice for the American people in November 2024 will be about protecting our democracy and every American’s fundamental freedoms,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez said.
Following his visit to Pennsylvania, President Biden will travel to Charleston, South Carolina, for a campaign event on Jan. 8 at Mother Emanuel AME Church, a historic black church where nine black parishioners were shot and killed by a white man in 2015.
President Biden will underscore what is at stake in the 2024 election during his visits to both Valley Forge and Charleston.
In a memo released on Jan. 2, Trump campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles argued that the current president is the greater threat to the American democracy.
“Please make no mistake: Joe Biden and his allies are a real and compelling threat to our Democracy,” they said. “In fact, in a way never seen before in our history, they are waging a war against it.”
They accused Democrats of resorting to “unconstitutional methods” to prevent President Trump from running for re-election.
Campaign Message
The president held a lunch meeting with a group of scholars and historians on Jan. 3 to “discuss ongoing threats” to democracy in the United States and abroad, according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.“What happened on Jan. 6 was unprecedented—an attack on our core principles, an attack on democracy. What we saw was an attack on our rule of law, an attack on our Constitution,” she told reporters on Jan. 3.
Ms. Jean Pierre, however, didn’t reveal any information regarding the meeting’s specifics, including its participants.
The Biden campaign released its first advertisement for 2024 on Jan. 4, similarly centering on the same idea—the need to protect U.S. democracy.
The ad, named “Cause,” was narrated by President Biden and will air for the first time on television on Saturday.
“I’ve made the preservation of American democracy a central issue of my presidency,” the president says in the ad. “Now, something dangerous is happening in America. There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy.”
President Biden has struggled to persuade Americans to support his economic strategy, which he refers to as “Bidenomics.” The recent action is viewed as an attempt to shift the narrative and focus on the “threat” to democracy.
Most Americans are concerned about his age and disapprove of his handling of inflation, according to numerous polls.
